On Milestones, Creativity, and Expectations

Sometimes we are actually right on track, even if we don't know it!

The thing about milestones

For a lot of years, the word milestones made me break out in hives.

I’m not talking about the years I had to memorize them to pass my child psych class in gradschool (that was more indigestion than hives). I’m talking about the years my kid was way behind the curve on, like, everything.

Talking? Did that six monthsish late.

Walking? Did that a year late.

Sleeping through the night? Still waiting on that one.

There were a lot of good reasons why my kid took forever to do stuff it felt like every kid around her was doing. I, of course, ignored all of those reasons and blame the thing that is always to blame in every situation even if has nothing to do with me: MY PARENTING.

Lately, the milestones are different…

…except that I still blame myself if she misses them.

That’s not different. That is very much the same.

Anyway, about these new milestones: they’re not as huge as walking and talking, which you can tell because they don’t make you track them on babycenter as a test of whether or not you are a screw up as a way to tell whether your kid needs early intervention.

Here’s what milestones look like at our house: The kid has switched to regular toothpaste instead of the gross fluorescent kids’ kind. Oh, and she’s using normal sized toothbrushes too. Hallelujah!

We’re switching her from cash allowance to a bank account.*

We got rid of her car seat because it was too high and her head was almost hitting the car ceiling.

I was okay with the other ones, but the carseat? Gotta admit, I welled up a little. Okay, fine, real talk: I straight up cried.

*Okay, this is a whole other newsletter, buuuut….why is cash so hard to find? Why are we trusting children with debit cards? Why the hell am I giving my kid an allowance that doesn’t involve bribing her for straight A’s? Am I even an immigrant?

Like I was saying, parenting is weird

Why was I so emotional about the carseat? I have no idea.

I mean, to be honest, I might have teared up because she’d secretly been storing a sahara desert’s worth of cracker crumbs and an entire lego village under the thing (if anyone wants to give me a car wash coupon including interiors for my birthday I WILL TAKE IT). I also might have been tearing up with relief - for me, every met milestone feels like a step towards ushering her safely into adulthood.

But really, I was tearing up because that’s when you do when your kids get older. You thank the gods that you no longer have to wipe their butt / buy disgusting toothpaste / teach them how to wear a seatbelt. But you also cry about it, because time passes, and things change, and change is not something we humans are into.

All this got me thinking about my own milestones

One of the things you learn about in the aforementioned child / developmental psychology class is that we never stop developing. Sure, there’s toddler hood and middle childhood and tweenhood* and teenhood**, but there’s also your twenties and young parenthood and perimenopause and retirement and all kinds of other stuff.

Which got me thinking about my own developmental stage - not as a person, but as a writer.

*GET ME OUT OF HERE

**I want to go to there

Some of my writing developmental milestones

I started my writing career officially when I was 27 (28?) and I published my first children’s story in a now defunct magazine called Kahani (RIP). Lately, as you know from reading this newsletter, I’ve been beating myself up for not writing bestselling award winning books while parenting, finding a job, trying to live in a place that doesn’t feel like home, and trying to sustain a marriage (more on this in future newsletters - stay tuned!) So it was totally healing for me to look back on what I’ve accomplished and make a list of small victories.

To no one’s surprise, these are not your typical victories. But they are the ones that mean the most to me. Here they are:

1. Having a bunch of friends text me because one of the first stories I ever published ended up being a practice passage for standardized testing in like 12 states and I don’t know how I feel about that because standardized tests suck and no child left behind should be repealed but also every year I hear from people I haven’t heard from in forever because their kids are reading my passage and getting tortured with test prep so I guess that’s good? The getting in touch part, I mean, not the tortured part?

2. Getting to do panels with authors I love like Melissa Febos, Bryan Washington, Olivia Abtahi, and a bunch of other people who I can’t think of BUT YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE AND I LOVE YOU.

3. Getting to be friends with writers who I admire personally and professionally and creatively. And by friends, I mean real friends - like, come over and eat my mom’s cooking, let’s get our kids together and gossip about the industry type friends.

4. Getting to the point where my non-writer friends won’t tell me what they’re reading because they know I know ALL the gossip and will totally ruin their reading experience by telling them that the author of their favorite book is a terrible human! (This is an Aunty milestone!) (Also I’m realizing this list is gossip heavy so PIVOTING NOW!)

5. Interviewing Ziwe.

What creative milestones have you met?

Try listing them! This whole thing made me feel good about myself, and I bet it’ll make you feel good too. Because sometimes you don’t realize how much you’ve accomplished until you sit down and list it all out. I bet you’ll realize what I already know: that you are creative genius / badass and we are all lucky to have you in the world.

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